During conventional camera photography, a photography technique known as a “follow shot” is used to photograph a moving object such as a train, an automobile, or a sport scene. A “follow shot” is a technique in which image pickup is performed while moving (panning) the camera in accordance with movement of the object so that an object position within a finder (an image) of the object is static. With follow shot photography, an image in which a background appears to flow but the object does not blur can be obtained, and therefore an image expressing a sense of speed can be obtained. In actuality, however, it is not easy to fix the object position within the image during image pickup (during a period in which a shutter is open and an imaging device is exposed), and therefore the object is often blurred. Methods such as sensing a movement direction of the camera during image pickup using an angular velocity sensor and suppressing a blur component in a direction that is not the movement direction of the camera by shifting an optical system or the imaging device have been employed as typical conventional methods of dealing with this problem. For example, when the camera pans in a horizontal direction, vertical direction blur is suppressed.
JP2007-074031A discloses a method in which an image area is divided into a mesh form, the respective areas are divided into a target area and other areas using motion vectors of the respective areas, and a smoothing filter for producing a similar blur effect to that of a follow shot is applied to the part that is not the target area.